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Watch this interview on CTV Montreal with Marc Lafrance, a friend and colleague of Homa Hoodfar, on the #FreeHoma campaign, the conditions of the Evin prison, and Homa's academic background. He also gives simple instructions on what you can do TODAY to contribute to the campaign, by visiting www.homahoodfar.org.

A Turkish journalist has been sentenced to 20 months in jail and stripped of legal rights over her children for breaching the confidentiality of a court case, her lawyer said on Wednesday, raising further concern about deteriorating press freedoms.

Arzu Yildiz was sued by the state after publishing footage in May 2015 from a court hearing at which four prosecutors were on trial for ordering a search of trucks belonging to Turkey's MIT intelligence agency as they traveled to Syria in 2014.

(Beirut) – The extremist armed group Islamic State should urgently release Yezidi women and girls they abducted in 2014, Human Rights Watch said today, following new research with recent escapees who were raped and traded between members before they fled. Islamic State (also known as ISIS) also routinely imposes abusive restrictions on other Iraqi women and girls and severely limits their freedom of movement and access to health care and education in areas under its control, Human Rights Watch said today.

Last week - we were alarmed by news from our sisters in Nazra Feminist Studies in Egypt about the summoning of their staff by the Egyptian court for their alleged breach of the controversial law on receiving "foreign funding". This is just one of a series of events of what seems to be an orchestrated clampdown on Egyptian human rights organisations and which could cripple their activities in defending the rights of others.

A court is expected to rule on the asset freeze ordered against two prominent human rights defenders: Gamal Eid, a lawyer who heads

Seventeen rights organisations issued a joint statement on Monday condemning the reopening the case 173/2011, publicly known as the foreign funding case, referring to it as an “orchestrated, escalating assault” on civil society in Egypt.

The rights organisations include the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), El Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture and Nazra for Feminist Studies​.